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Back in 1855, fifty or so pioneers made their way into what is now known as Marshall County, Kansas. Food was scarce, housing was non-existent. Each of them paid approximately $25 into a general fund for a determined amount of land and agreed to use the money to purchase a steam saw-mill. By 1857, they had their mill.

Daniel Caldwell Auld was one of those pioneers. Born in Pennsylvania, he was raised in Ohio by his Irish immigrant parents. He became the area’s first justice of the peace a year after his arrival in Kansas and his home also served as the second post office ever established in Marshall County. His son, William, took over as postmaster when Daniel Auld joined the army. A staunch union man, he fought many battles in the Civil War and returned home to serve in the legislature and help Kansas become a state.

And here is where my ignorance of pioneer statehood comes to light: Kansans fought ardently to make theirs a “Free State”, the very opposite of the bloodthirsty pro-slavery agenda being carried out by Missourians just across the border. It turns out Kansans had no intention of creating a Free State for blacks escaping or being released from their lives of brutal slavery in the South. What they really wanted was a Free State for free white people who saw no good in getting politically involved in the slavery issue.

This changes my original feelings for Mr. Daniel Auld, who I spent a week or so believing was an do-gooder abolitionist, but I live a relatively comfortable life 150 years after the fact, so…I can’t judge. Besides, who’s to say back then that having no involvement in the slavery feud was just as bad as, or worse than, being pro-slavery? Was there a difference? Ah, questions for another day.

By now you may be wondering why in the world I’m rambling on about Kansas, the Auld family, and legislative issues from the 1860s. If it helps you at all, I am, too! My story about Marshall County, Kansas, wasn’t supposed to go in this direction but, as you may sometimes notice, I get excited about historical facts that nobody else cares about in the hopes that you will eventually care about them.

It all started with this book my husband purchased a few years ago for $10 at a local antique shop:

…which led me to me getting all weird about holding in my hands a record book that came to life a year after Abraham Lincoln’s assassination!

The pages of this record book hold school board minutes beginning in 1866 and document who paid their school bonds on time, in full, and who still owed on a payment plan. Daniel’s son, William, was elected to be the Superintendent of the school district they were trying to create and signed off on many a paragraph closing the meetings and passing directions to others. The surnames Barrett, Raiden, Strong, and, of course, Auld are prominent (as were their families in local matters, I have come to learn). I’m afraid to keep perusing through the book because the fragile pages are beginning to slip from their binding, so I tried my best to make mental notes and employ my usually useful photographic memory to retell what the majority of the pages really hold: recipes and oddly placed bits on how to survive pioneer life.

There are recipes for everything – I lost count of how many types of bread these people baked – and I am utterly confused by the recipe instructions, so Matt and I got a good laugh at the final step for a lot of them, which is to “toss it into the quick oven”. What does that even mean? I need temperatures and measurements to work with, times for which to let the breads bake, and where does one even find lard these days?

Household tips include burning brown sugar bits on charcoals inside your room (“room” was underlined emphatically!!!!!!) to ward off mosquitoes. And if your child is suffering from croup, tie a handkerchief tightly around his neck (but not too tightly) after soaking the cloth in various “vapors”. Uh…what?

And here’s another gem found on a page explaining how to remove stains from one’s silk square pieces (handkerchiefs?) – a tip to treat cholera (is the acid phosphate sold in the same place I can find lard?).

Matt and I decided to donate the record book to Marshall County’s Historical Society, a small volunteer-run organization that is only open for phone calls three hours a day. I got so excited that I called early and left a message. A nice woman named Ms. Skinner called me back while I was making dinner, long after the three hour window had closed. When I told her the book was from 1866 and rattled off some of the names listed inside, she sounded genuinely shocked and said, “1866? That was before anything!” She took our names to give us credit for the donation and told me to ship it to her at my convenience.

I thought a little this morning about the name Skinner, because it didn’t show up in the record book at all. Marshall County, Kansas, is home to a tiny population of 10,000 and it’s unlikely (according to my amateur observations) that someone would live there unless they had always lived there, at least in the family name. If I am correct, which I think I am, Ms. Skinner is somehow related to one half of the publishing firm Brice & Skinnerwho distributed a local weekly called the Blue Rapids Times. The paper made its debut in July of 1871 and still runs today.

My mother was born in Marinette, Wisconsin, a small northern town you’ve probably never heard of that sits on the border with Upper Michigan. Marinette is only a couple of miles northeast of Peshtigo, Wisconsin, another town you’ve probably never heard of. And that’s a shame.

I could try to recreate the town of Peshtigo for you from memory, but decades have passed since I last went through the place. I can’t believe too much about it has changed, though. It was (and probably still is) a close-knit lumber town surrounded by pine forests and smelled of the nearby paper mill. Peshtigo is also divided in half by a river, not surprisingly called the Peshtigo River.

Because I grew up in nearby Marquette, Michigan and passed through Peshtigo at least a handful of times every year as a kid, I know its history. I know its story. I know why nobody else knows it, too. In fact, during my junior year of high school in suburban D.C., Peshtigo’s story was the one thing that helped me graduate from high school on time. My class attendance was awful, truancy-worthy, even, but my history teacher gave me a final shot at passing his class. His challenge:

Teach me something I don’t already know.

So I told him about Peshtigo. I told him about the lumber town, the river, and of one of the driest summers on record. I told him what happened on October 8, 1871, and he asked, “Isn’t that the same date as the Great Chicago Fire?” Why, yes. Yes, it is!

I passed my history class, became a senior, and spent some of my final year of high school helping to grade juniors’ papers with my former history teacher.

***

The reason most people have never heard of the town of Peshtigo is because of Chicago. More people were killed in the Peshtigo Fire, an estimated 2,500 compared to Chicago’s 200 to 300. They both occurred on the same date. Peshtigo’s fire was caused by drought and lightning, not by a legendary cow (I’m looking at you, Mrs. O’Leary!). The firestorm in Peshtigo was exactly that: a storm. It created its own weather patterns complete with cloud-to-ground lightning and tornadoes. But what’s all that worth when a cosmopolitan city on the lakeshore is nearly destroyed by a cow? Forgotten history, indeed.

(I had been struggling a bit to come up with a topic for my upcoming thesis for my bachelor’s degree. When I came across this page in Andrew Carroll’s Here is Where: Discovering America’s Great Forgotten History, I took it as a sign. Also, if you have knowledge of any resources or people, historians or otherwise, that/who may be able to help me with my research, please let me know.):

The three of us went out to eat a few nights ago and my daughter was playing a game called Plague, Inc. on Matt’s iPhone. Elle wanted me to help her choose symptoms, just a few things to support the launch of her virtual pestilence that she and my husband so heartwarmingly named Mother. We discussed joint pain, fever, vomiting, jaundice, and even tossed around the idea of a painful rash. When Matt ordered his dinner, I mistakenly thought I heard him say “barbecue” so I immediately, and very excitedly, went off on a tangent explaining the 1868 Yellow Fever outbreak in Memphis and its likely contribution to the city’s deep African-American roots. Think about it: were it not for that pesky epidemic, we might not have ever heard of rock n’ roll, B.B. King, or barbecued pork.

Matt and Elle both called me a nerd and never before had I felt so sure about my future career plans in public history.

C.S. Lewis once said, “You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.” This, whatever this is, is not another goal nor is it a new dream. It is simply a more refined goal or, if you prefer to be all woo-woo about these sorts of things, an old dream with much better direction.

This post went off the rails about ten links back, but I love to share a good read with anyone who is interested. I am also thrilled to receive new book recommendations so feel free to fire away.

At times, I feel disconnected from the parts of the country that I really love to learn about – Oklahoma is rich in Native American history, obviously, but I’m more of a Civil Rights and Civil War kind of girl. If you know of any war monuments, landmarks, or related places of interest here in the middle of the country, please share.

It tends to be very hot this time of year in Oklahoma, which is evident today as the mercury is set to climb to 91 degrees. This past weekend, on the other hand, was sunny, gorgeous, and unexpectedly comfortable. We spent most of Saturday at the Oklahoma Renaissance Festival, about a half hour from our cabin at Greenleaf, where we wandered the Castle grounds with gypsies, jesters, knights, and the occasional child butterfly fairy. I bought a colorful skirt from an adorable orange-haired pixie and an Italian peasant girl made me one of the most delicious iced caramel lattes I’ve ever had.

Even Elle admitted to having the best weekend ever. She got to dress up as a gypsy and wear a bright-colored skirt. She played with a bow and arrows, saw her first jousting competition, and walked through a torture chamber museum. Here she is getting her first henna tattoo:

The great thing about these Renaissance Festivals is that much of what the vendors sell is handmade, or at least produced by small companies that specialize in Renaissance pieces. There were merchants selling plague masks, leather-bound books, hand-carved walking sticks, and even giant wind chimes that sound like church bells, which we ended up coming home with. In this little shop (or should I say shoppe?), I went a little nuts over this whimsical painting and the wooden Viking ship pencil holders (but stay tuned for more Vikings!):

It’s been decided that, shall I ever have the opportunity to travel back in time, I would like to visit this era (but only after it has been introduced to proper sanitation).

Sometimes I am rewarded with good timing instead of good karma, unless you’re one of those people who considers them to be one and the same. I am not one of those people. Karma is karma, usually in a singular event. Good timing involves a number of events. Good timing requires good karma, I believe, but they are not the same thing.

Let me explain: Have you ever been introduced to something you knew nothing about only to later find yourself coming across this “something” all the time? I consider that good timing (and good observation skills). It happens to me an awful lot with words and only occasionally with facts. This instance involves Nantucket, which I will throw into the category of facts.

I have no affiliation with the island of Nantucket at all. My New World/New England ancestors got rich in the village of Salem, Mass., pre-witch hunts, converted a bunch of people into Baptists, and then tried to settle in New Amsterdam (New York City – Throggs Neck, anyone?) until the natives slaughtered the lot of them. My man John and the Throckmorton family survived and ran off to Rhode Island to found Providence. Also, the farthest into New England I’ve ever gone was Amish Country in Pennsylvania. Does that even count?

Not too long ago, I finished reading In the Heart of the Sea by Nathaniel Philbrick, a true story of a whaling disaster that originated in Nantucket. Needing some whimsy to decompress from the horrors of being stranded in the Pacific and the games of chance to see which of your shipmates gets cannibalized next, I took to reading Mat Johnson’s Pym. Again, there is a strong connection to the island of Nantucket. The story itself does not originate in Nantucket, but the story within the story does.

Lake Hefner lighthouse

Last week while Matt and I were bicycling around Lake Hefner, we decided to stop for a break because, well…the wind, and benched ourselves near the Lake Hefner lighthouse. This was the first time I had ever paid attention to the plaque leading up to the structure itself. And guess what? It told me that the Lake Hefner lighthouse is an 36-foot tall replica of the Brandt Point lighthouse in Nantucket!

You might think this is very unimportant, and maybe it is. But then you have to ask yourself: Why is there a replica of a Nantucket lighthouse in Oklahoma City? I haven’t figured this out yet. The reading of the books and the bike ride all occurred within three weeks of each other, which means this Nantucket thing keeps showing up in my life. Why? I haven’t figured this out yet, either, but I am a believer in good timing and weird little coincidences. Something is afoot.

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck: I may never have read this had I not moved to Oklahoma. These Okies are a prideful bunch and Steinbeck is never far from their thoughts, it seems. I’m just sorry it took me so long to finally start reading it.

Black Like Meby John Howard Griffin: This book was purchased at a Half Price Books for less than four bucks. One of the best book buys I’ve ever made. Also, why is this not required reading for high school students? Or college students, for that matter?

In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex by Nathaniel Philbrick: My paperback copy had been sitting on the bookshelf for a few years and I only decided to read it because Black Like Me was weighing heavy on my mind and I needed more tragedy…I guess? This actually works in my favor because I have yet to read Moby Dick and Melville’s tale was based on the Essex disaster. Happy accident. The timing of my book choices, not the Essex getting rammed by an angry whale.

All three of these books seem to have led me to Pym by Mat Johnson, another happy accident. I’ll be honest with you: I only chose Pym because I saw it listed as a “current read” by a blogger I read just so I can catch a glimpse of the wonderful foods and cakes she’s always cooking up and posting photographs of. Plus I liked the cover (yes, I do judge books by their covers). But Pym combines the lessons of all those other books mentioned above (friendship and hope, racism and slavery, woefully unprepared seafaring crews) in just this one tale. I can’t even begin to explain it to you.

As I crawled into bed last night, I reached over and grabbed the book I’m currently reading from my shelf. This book is on my own personal bookshelf, of course, much to the surprise of my husband who looked at me and said, “You’re reading that for fun?”

688 pages of things I should already know

Yes! Then I blabbered on about all I had learned in just the first three pages (sadly, I don’t have a lot of free time these days for fun reading). What isn’t entertaining about hearing how Christopher Columbus set into motion the complete extinction of the Arawak people in the Bahamian Islands beginning in 1492? He was a schmuck, a liar, and a manipulative bastard who managed to pocket an annual pension away from a sailor named Rodrigo. Apparently a reward was to be given to whoever spotted land after more than a month at sea and Rodrigo saw white sand on the horizon on October 12th, legitimately having claim to the reward. Well, here comes Christopher Columbus who swore he’d seen land the night before. C’mon, really? What a jerk.

How Columbus managed to persuade the king and queen of Spain to completely finance his wackadoodle sea voyages to capture gold and slaves (and slaves were way more plentiful than this gold he kept yammering on about) astounds me. Was he like the Rasputin of the New World or something?

Moving on…

Matt is sometimes baffled by how I can manage to read more than one book at a time. He is faithfully committed to finishing any book he starts and never gives attention to another until the current book’s last page has been read. Aside from my textbook readings that require about three hours of my time a day, I have four books on my current bookshelf. These are the books that I read at night to decompress and I’m honestly pretty thrilled when I can manage to get through more than two paragraphs before I fall asleep.

Howard Zinn: The People’s History of the United States – I only read the first page yesterday while waiting in the car pick-up line to get my daughter after school. Three pages in, I was hooked. I know history books are usually written by the victors of wars or the mentors of a struggling government and everything comes out in the end hunky dory, but I have a feeling this isn’t one of those books. Do I believe everything Zinn writes? Of course not, and therein lies the responsibility of the reader – research, research some more, then research even more! There will always be people who disagree with your conclusion.

Sarah Vowell: Take the Cannoli – I love this woman. Sometimes I find her writing style difficult to appreciate when she tries too hard to describe certain events with run-on sentences that I have to read more than once. This book is more about her personal life, though, and includes often hilarious essays such as how her Cherokee ancestry affects her opinion of Andrew Jackson or how she hid her obsession with The Godfather movies from her roommates so they wouldn’t think she was weird (if only they’d known she used to ride her bicycle to town as a teenager to hear presidential debates). Her book Assassination Vacation is one of the most entertaining books I’ve ever read. I only wish it had been around in my D.C.-livin’ days. Ford’s Theater will be seen with fresh eyes the next time I visit.

Stephen Hawking: A Brief History of Time – The simple fact that Hawking is a scientist intimidates me but I read this book for an astronomy class years ago and actually enjoyed it! I wouldn’t have this on my bookshelf again were it not for the fact that I’m taking yet another universe-evolution class. Hawking has a unique writing style that reaches out to those of us who don’t understand even the basis of how stars are born and he explains everything clearly. On the flipside, he adds personal touches to his narrative by discussing his earlier fears regarding his ALS diagnosis and (false) life expectancy and at one point even admits that even he no longer believes in the theory he worked for 20 years to prove. It is now one of his goals to convince all those other scientists that he was wrong. You gotta love a guy who can admit he’s wrong, amirite?

Jonathan Weiner: The Beak of the Finch – Again, this is another book I am reading for a class on biology and evolutionary progress, but it is very well written! I have enjoyed this book more than I expected and I actually packed it for our camping trip (and no other books). My spring break vacation was spent camping, hiking, and reading about the evolution of finches’ beaks while the campfire roared away. Weiner is sometimes repetitive with his information but I don’t find it distracting. In fact, I quite appreciate it. Perhaps this is why the book is so popular – not only does it break down the decades’ worth of work put in by the Grants on the Galapagos Islands, but it is written so that anyone can understand it. Have you ever read an entire chapter on how a single millimeter can make or break the evolutionary cycle of bird’s beak? Neither have I but it was fascinating! Evolution doesn’t take millions of years. It can happen over the course of one or two generations.

Plans for the summer are already in the works. There is no question that I’ll be returning to Florida for a few weeks, but I might try turning this 2-day drive into a less frantic rush to reach the North Florida coast. I am hoping to make some time with the kiddo to walk the Civil War battlefield in Vicksburg, Mississippi or to tour the USS Alabama battleship in Mobile Bay, which is the last thing to disappear in my rearview mirror as I cross over Escambia Bay into Florida.

I think the overdue appearance of spring here in Oklahoma has me already pining for summer in Florida. There is even a remote possibility of finally seeing Key West with my husband.

Mississippi River and Civil War cannon in Vicksburg, MS

I like having a plan, as I’ve mentioned before. My astrological sign accuses me of being indecisive and a website I recently came across calls my Libran indecisiveness legendary. I won’t argue with either of those statements although I wish there were more emphasis on the Libran’s ability to commit to that hard-to-come-to final decision. Happily, I have made a decision for myself and it will have everything to do with what happens next year as far as deciding whether I will continue on with my education or rest for a while and enjoy life without research projects for once.

Or research projects in the academic sense, I should say, because I’ve decided to volunteer at the Oklahoma History Center. This opportunity will teach me a variety of skills such as preservation, genealogical research, and cataloguing as well as help me to become more familiar with specific exhibits and, ultimately, Oklahoma itself. As much as I get exhausted by the socializing required of me when my husband and I host weekend gatherings at our house (one Sunday after our hot tub party, I barely moved out of bed for the entire day and thought I might have caught the flu – nah, I was just tired and I’d been sober the day before!), I really do enjoy being in front of a crowd of people, even kids, and sharing knowledge. This experience will give me that knowledge to share. I’m a history nerd and I want to get others excited about it, too.

(Case in point: I had my daughter watch the Capital Cities video for Safe & Sound and explained to her the evolution of dancing and how it corresponds to the video’s scenes of war. She immediately went off to Google the Hindenburg disaster and learn more about the A-bomb. Mission accomplished.)

It feels good to have a plan, to have some kind of direction, even if it seems vague to everyone else. Sarah Vowell even wrote in Take the Canolli: Stories From the New World, “There comes a time halfway through any halfway decent liberal arts major’s college career when she no longer has any idea what she believes. She flies violently through air polluted by conflicting ideas and theories, never stopping at one system of thought long enough to feel at home.”

Sarah (I once had a dream that I picked her up in my neighborhood where she was hitchhiking so, in my head, we’re now on a first name basis with each other) closes this thought by adding, “Until I figured out that the flight between questions is itself a workable system, I craved answers, rules.”

It hits me as rather strange that it’s taken me this long to figure that out. Thanks, Sarah.

Over a year ago, Matt, Elle, and I celebrated our first Christmas together by visiting three cities in three separate states: Orangeburg, South Carolina; Savannah, Georgia; and Saint Augustine, Florida. My photographs from that trip came out so shadowed and dark that when I uploaded them onto my computer, I was so overwhelmed by the amount of time I would have to spend to make them all somewhat presentable. I just never did it.

So this morning when I plunked myself down to finish the last four pages of a riveting (*choke*) essay on Catholic and Protestant styles of Baroque art, I decided after an hour of navigating art forums that it was the perfect moment to adjust some of the pictures. I went with Saint Augustine first since that was the biggest batch.

I’m learning that with this subject of piety there is no sure guarantee that inspiration and/or motivation will strike. But I have always been a better writer under the building pressure of a deadline. Also, I find that, for me, sometimes procrastinating isn’t necessarily a putting off or shirking of responsibilities. I am the kind of person who will allow someone to walk away from an argument and I would expect to be given the same respect from my opponent, to clear our heads and cool down, if you will. This is what my relationship has been like with Reformation and the Counter-Reformation, filled with more hate than love, actually.

So, here are my lightened photographs of Saint Augustine, Florida – one of my favorite cities in the world and aptly named after Augustine of Hippo, who many Protestants and Calvinists consider to be one of the theological fathers of the Protestant Reformation. Would you believe I had no clue of the connection between my photos, this city, and my research paper until I wrote this last paragraph? I find this a bit odd, if not entirely ironic, that even while trying to clear my mind of all things Catholic and Protestant, there never really was any chance of escape.

Nicely played, Augustine. Nicely played.

Flagler College (the former Ponce de Leon hotel)

looking up at the St. Augustine lighthouse

Castillo de San Marco

Crescent Beach

Good morning!

gorgeous hibiscus

(I do know that the Enlightenment happened after the Reformation/Counter-Reformation, but it was a huge influence on the period and really…I just couldn’t help myself with that title.)

Our hotel was strategically placed directly between two distinct Indianapolis landmarks: the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument and the Indiana State House. Whoever built this city must have thought long and hard about the placement of each structure because the sun very perfectly rises and sets behind them, respectively. Or the city planners were just really lucky.

I walked out the door of the hotel, took a right, took another right, and walked two blocks straight up the steps to the Indiana State House. Its original building was constructed in 1835 at the cost of $60,000 (sixty thousand dollars), but it collapsed (budget cheapery, mayhaps?) and a new one was built. I thought about how much it looked like the U.S. Capitol Building and later learned that Edwin May, the architect with a budget of $2,000,000 (two million dollars!) in 1878, swiped the design idea from the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. Ten years later, the State House was completed and came in under budget.

One hundred years later in 1987-1988, restorations took $11,000,000 to complete. ELEVEN MILLION DOLLARS. That’s an absurd amount of money! It sure makes for pretty pictures, though.

There is a lot of history to this building, most of which I won’t get into because it involves politics and politicians and I really have no interest in either one of those things. My fascination with this building comes in the form of small snippets of nonsensical information, things you’d expect to learn from watching Jeopardy! and smiling smugly to yourself for actually having known the answer. At least, that’s how I measure my success when watching the show. In smugness points.

The restoration in 1988 included the hand stenciled artwork of 4 acres of walls and ceilings on the fourth floor. I am actually more impressed by the 4 acres than by the hand stenciling, simply because I have always associated acreage with land ownership and farming and not with State House wall areas.

The third floor chandelier is lit by 100 lights, each meant to represent a member of the House.

There are fifty desks in use when the General Assembly is in session. This means they have to share. Ha. But remember – they each get their own light on that aforementioned chandelier.

It is imperative that you do not walk on the grass. I’m not sure why, but this instruction was noted in the walking tour handout as well as told to me by the armed police officer who let me into the building after scanning me for bombs, handguns, and other weapons. Obviously, their lawn is important to them (it’s too bad they don’t pay just as much attention to their dying flowers).

Back in the day, the State House included a tunnel entrance for horse and wagon deliveries but it no longer exists. That’s a shame.

Notable Indianans:

Abraham Lincoln. I had no idea!

Should I have known this? That Lincoln spent fourteen years of his childhood in southern Indiana? I always thought he had been born and raised in Illinois, but this explains the significance of the Lincoln funeral train stopping by the original Indiana State House building in 1865 on its way to Springfield, Illinois.

Then there’s this guy, Richard Owen.

There is nothing posted anywhere informing visitors as to why he is such a prominent figure or at least enough of one to warrant a bust in the State House that alludes to him being some kind of caped avenger. It’s an impressive sculpture. Doesn’t he look like he’s exacting justice in the world (or in Indiana) just by the intense look on his face and the fact that his arms are crossed? He has totally out-serioused my own serious face. I like you already, Col. Owen.

It turns out he was Scottish, but he was a really, really nice guy. That’s why he has a place in the State House, because he was nice. Apparently during the Civil War, Colonel Owen guarded four thousand imprisoned enemy troops until he and his own regiment were taken as prisoners of war. After his release, Colonel Owen was personally thanked by a gracious former enemy, General Buckner, for the pleasantness and kind treatment Owen bestowed upon his own enemy prisoners.

Prior to his war obligations, Owen was a geologist who was the first to ever explore (scientifically, at least) the northern shore of Lake Superior. After the war, he was elected President of Purdue University. The school was so unorganized, though, that he refused to take on the job.